Venture Capital investment in startups: Early-stage venture capital firm Unitus Ventures, on Wednesday, announced its merger with its US affiliate Capria Ventures to operate under a single brand Capria Ventures. The merger will allow Capria Ventures, which focuses on startups having a Generating AI strategy, to be a multi-stage VC in India with investments in early-stage as well as early growth-stage startups across sectors including fintech, jobtech, edtech, agtech, climate, and software as a service (SaaS).
Generative AI is akin to a smart computer program that can create things on its own, like writing stories, making art, or generating music. It works by learning from various examples and creates things similar to what it learned. In other words, it learns from various data sets such as text, images, or music, and creates new things that are akin to what it learned.
Capria Ventures manages assets exceeding $188 million. It has recently made 10 investments in applied GenAI companies and plans to back over 30 additional GenAI-focused startups in India and the rest of the ‘Global South’. Global South is typically referred to technically and socially less-developed countries located in Africa and Asia.
Will Poole, Managing Partner, Capria Ventures and former Managing Partner for Unitus Ventures, said, “Going forward, more than 75 per cent of our investments will be placed in applied GenAI companies. We are also confident that Unitus Ventures’ alignment with the Capria brand and strategy will create more value for founders.”
Capria said it will continue investing in the emerging tech hubs in Global South such as Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Singapore, Jakarta, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Lagos, Buenos Aires, Ho Chi Minh City and Cairo.
“Together, we can better harness the power of GenAI for our combined portfolio. We will expand the focus of our India investments to include Climate and Agtech in addition to our traditional strengths in jobtech, fintech and SaaS,” said Surya Mantha, Managing Partner, Capria Ventures and former Managing Partner, Unitus Ventures.
According to the data from Statista, India’s GenAI industry stood at $760 million in 2023, which is expected to cross $4.2 billion by 2030.